


Don't Look Back In Anger

by Carbocat



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Adult Losers Club (IT), Depression, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Not A Fix-It, Survivor Guilt, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, everybody is in this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-10
Updated: 2019-10-10
Packaged: 2020-12-07 11:44:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20975363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carbocat/pseuds/Carbocat
Summary: If Derry was a burning building than – no.No, Richie thought. If Derry was a collapsing house on top of a demonic clown’s murder dungeon than he was refusing to find the front door. There were no friends left to pull him out. There was no will to be saved, to leave.There were just bloodstains on his shirt and scratches on his glasses, and there were a limited number of roads that he could crisscross a hundred thousand different ways and never be led out of town. He wasn’t even looking for the exit anymore.





	Don't Look Back In Anger

Richie didn’t leave.

He had packed up his bag at the Townhouse the way that Mike had packed a bag for the Florida coast. He put the bag in the trunk of his car, put his room keys on the front counter, said his goodbyes just like Ben, and Bev, and Bill had. He gave his hugs, gave kisses on cheeks, made promises that he would never keep.

He had said, _I love you, guys. _

He had said, _I’ll keep in touch._

He had said, _I’ll be alright. I would tell you if I wasn’t. You know that I never shut the fuck up anyways, remember? _

He had got in his car and he had drove, just like everybody else.

He had drove passed the old theater. He had sped through Bassey Park, let his car idle outside of the abandoned arcade for hours and hours, and drove to the kissing bridge. He had stopped the car. He’d gotten out.

He didn’t even touch the city limits that first day.

He didn’t go anywhere near it.

He had drove, and drove, and drove, and he got a room at the Koala Inn. He had three days’ worth of sewer stained clothes, had dates in Vegas that he wasn’t going to attend, had Eddie’s suitcase in the trunk of his car. He had Eddie’s housekeys hooked onto his keyring and Eddie’s ridiculous number of toiletries cluttering his hotel room like some demented psychopath murderer collecting trophies from the dead.

And he never left.

There used to be this slingshot _need_ to get the fuck out of Derry. It buzzed beneath his skin and in his teeth since he was old enough to know that there was a life outside of this town. There used to be a kind of slick desperation that would crawl cold up his spine and would squeeze a vice so tight around him that it clawed a town-wide claustrophobia into his bones.

The _need_. The want. The – the fucking _knowledge_ that if he didn’t get the hell out of Derry than he would die there had just went away. The feeling had disappeared like everything else had disappeared.

There was nothing in him like what had been here when he was eighteen and rebellious against nothing and everything, eighteen and not going to college like his friends. There was none of that determination, of that _spite_ or the chaotic unfound confidence that had convinced him to take the first bus out of town with nothing but sixty bucks and an SNL audition tape that he filmed in Bill’s basement.

_Look at me. Look at me. Don’t – look at me. _

There wasn’t anything that was keeping him in Derry either – no clowns, no scars on his hands, no childhood promise, or Eddie, or anything. Pennywise was fucking _dead_ and the Neibolt House had collapsed in on itself. Ben, and Bev, and Bill, and fucking Mike were gone. Eddie was fucking gone, and he was –

If Derry was a burning building than – _no_.

_No, _Richie thought. If Derry was a collapsing house on top of a demonic clown’s murder dungeon than he was refusing to find the front door. There were no friends left to pull him out. There was no will to be saved, to leave.

There were just bloodstains on his shirt and scratches on his glasses, and there were a limited number of roads that he could crisscross a hundred thousand different ways and never be led out of town. He wasn’t even looking for the exit anymore.

He didn’t say it in words.

It was never something that could be said in fucking words, so he didn’t leave.

He _couldn’t_ leave.

He could carve all his concern and his not-so-secrets into the side of a bridge for the world to see, but it wouldn’t matter. He didn’t know what would happen if he left, so he wasn’t. He didn’t know what he was even afraid of because the thought of forgetting and the thought of remembering were two equally terrifying things.

He didn’t know what was even holding him here because it wasn’t fucking Eddie.

He told himself, _Eddie was dead. _

He told himself, _Stan was dead. _

Comedy was just tragedy plus time, but there would never be enough time.

So, he stopped giving excuses.

He stopped waking up in the morning and pretending that today was going to be the day. He stopped practicing excuses in his head for phone calls he wouldn’t take. There was nothing left to say. There was nothing left to give.

He’d given his excuses. He gave up his childhood safety to this fucking clown, to this fucking town and all of their missing children posters. He gave up his security and peace of mind. He gave blood, and sanity, and his best fucking friends, and he was done. He was fucking _done_.

There were no more excuses.

He wasn’t visiting his parents, who haven’t lived in Derry for the last twenty years. He wasn’t seeing his sister who didn’t live here either. He wasn’t site seeing Maine, wasn’t going back to his roots, wasn’t writing new material. He wasn’t writing shit.

He stopped picking up the phone when his agent called. He stopped responding to text messages, to DMs, to fucking _Facebook_ messenger. He cancelled shows, cancelled the rest of his tour. He cancelled on Seth Myers, and told fans to shut the fuck up about it, and he was smiling way too fucking much.

It was stuck on his big dumb face through a clenched jaw because it felt like if he stopped smiling than he would start screaming, and if he started screaming than he would never stop.

He was _shattered_.

He was raw from inside out, _shredded_ to fucking pieces like he had swallowed a lifetime of broken mirror glass and absorbed all seven hundred years of bad luck. He felt like he was drowning in his own blood, in someone else’s blood. Felt like he was crumbling to pieces through the cracks in his clenched teeth, and he had a drink. He had a few drinks to numb out the guilt, to function as a person.

The streets of Derry had never been paved with good intentions. There was a darkness there that stained the town in the blood of too many missing children and no one ever thought to fucking look at how fucked up it was until they were gone. No one looked back until they were far enough to be thankful that they weren’t there anymore, but Derry had rich memories.

There were street corners that he had played games on, torn-down and abandoned buildings that he used to explore. Everything was lined with something that he had known and forgotten, tragedy and time.

It still wasn’t fucking funny.

He had ditched his car.

He’d taken up walking.

He committed to memory the paths that he used to take as a child, and he had walked them. He had taken Jackson onto Main, had turned into Richards Alley where he had been caught smoking cigarettes by Bill’s mother. He had walked to the Main Street Bridge where he had given a dramatic soliloquy to tired friends about his soon-to-be tragic death at the hands of his mother when she found out. He had stood outside of the Derry Public Library and remembered waiting for Ben there, remembered summer reading lists and fees he’d never paid, and he remembered rushing inside, the axe, Bower’s skull.

Richie threw up a lot more now than he was willing to admit.

He went to the synagogue in the morning and sat through the service in the same seat that he had witnessed Stan’s epic Bar Mitzvah speech. He had smiled just to smile and wiped at his eyes, and he thought about how Stanley was truly the best of them.

He thought about Stanley fighting to keep ahold of the microphone. He thought about the defiance in his quiet friend’s eyes and the set of his jaw, and he thought about how Stanley, who wouldn’t so much as swear if he thought that his mother was in the same house, looked his father in the eyes and said, _I know I’m a loser. No matter what, I always fucking will be. _

He remembered how Stanley was his best friend.

He remembered meeting him in kindergarten at the end of the line and their desks being near each other. He remembered Stanley kicking him under the table and kicking him back, and declared that he was his friend, _no take backs_.

He remembered that Stanley was the only person he told that he was leaving town for Los Angeles and big dreams, and how Stanley had said, _I hope you don’t fail. _

He walked across the kissing bridge and thought about all the lost time. He went to see a movie that he didn’t remember, stood in the alley outside of the Center Street Drugstore where he got his first kiss when Greta Bowie dared Sally Mueller to lay one on him and then called her a slut. He remembered standing in the alley with Ben, telling him that he was glad that he got to meet him before he died. He remembered how that solid joke had landed like a rock on unimpressed ears.

_Now get in there, Dr. K, and fix him up!_

He remembered.

And he remembered.

And he remembered even more.

Bradley Donovan used to have a massive lisp.

It was a thought that lapped over Richie’s mind like cold gray sewer water inside of the King Spirits liquor store off West Broadway. It had floated to the forefront of his mind like one of Betty Ripson’s shoes, like it was something that had been floating there forever, forgotten. Evidence, uncovered.

He had walked down West Broadway at the start of the morning, had circled the surround blocks in the heat of the rising New England sun until he caught sight of the sigh for the little hole-in-the-wall King Spirits and remembered the hilarious mural of Ronald Reagan smoking a joint that was painted on the backwall. He remembered all the times that he had bought shitty weed off the burnout that stocked the shelves on the weekend, remembered getting his fake ID cut in half after insulting the owner’s toupee, remembered stealing beer while Eddie faked an asthma attack and getting Ben so drunk that puke came out of his nose.

Bradley Donovan wasn’t the kind of supernatural forgetfulness that everything else had been. He didn’t forget him the way that he had forgotten about Eddie, and Stan, and Bill. He wasn’t something so important and special that had slipped like a dream through his fingers, no. He was just forgotten. Unimportant.

Bradley Donovan had settled into the bottom of Richie’s realization. He was just a vaguely familiar face from a childhood that he was still remembering, but older now. He was graying at the temples now. He was an _oh, I used to know that guy, _and nothing more.

Bradley Donovan had red hair. Bradley Donovan had a bad case of warts throughout middle school. Bradley Donovan was a sore loser, and a shitty fighter, and had been Bill’s friend from speech therapy that hung out with them for half a summer once. Bradly Donovan popped a boner in the middle of gym class twice during high school.

Richie remembered.

They nodded their acknowledgement of one another the way that you did when you weren’t friends in high school and hadn’t so much had thought about one another in twenty years when Richie slung the door open and stepped inside of the liquor store. He announced to the people inside, so very hyperaware of the face that he was sweating profusely and sunburnt to hell, “It’s hotter than Satan’s tits out there. Damn.”

Bradley snorted a laugh and the barely legal twenty-something behind the counter had rolled his eyes slowly before plastering on a fake customer service smile, “Global warming is a bitch. There’s a high of ninety-four today. Stay hydrated.”

“Why do you think I’m here?”

The conversation fizzled out on the long of a line of ellipses and it should have stayed hanging dead in the air because they weren’t friends in high school, and Richie wasn’t in the mood. He went to aisle that was lined with cheap whisky with local brand names. Bradley picked up a case of discounted Heineken from a display and the cashier flipped a page in his magazine, popping his gum.

Eddie used to have a lot to say about gum, Richie remembered.

“Hey, Trashmouth Tozier, right?” Bradley called from a different aisle. He sounded too loud, too close, and way too fucking drunk as he slurred all his words together. Richie bit back a response because he couldn’t really say anything mean about it when he was practically sweating his vodka dinner from last night. “I saw one of your shows up in Portsmouth last year.”

“Wow cool, you and fifty thousand other people,” He said flatly, letting the words scrape up his throat and cut against his tongue. They left him feeling like he was bleeding and for a split second, there was blood on his glasses. For a split second, he was on the ground and Eddie was smiling, was saying, _hey, Richie. Richie. I think I got it, man. I think I killed it for real. _

For a split second, Eddie was there.

Flesh and Blood. And blood.

Alive. Then dead.

Telling him that he had to fucking eat something before he _died_.

Richie blinked hard.

“It wasn’t as good as the other tour,” Bradley slurred, and Richie took a shaky breath, and then another. He squeezed his eyes shut until Eddie wasn’t there. He grabbed a bottle at random because he wanted it, because Eddie was fucking _dead_, was… _look at me, look at me, look at me. Don’t – _“I think you’re losing your touch, Tozier. Went all Hollywood or some shit. I liked that Masturbation Anonymous joke though. Was that based on real life?”

“I love unsolicited reviews from assholes who never left their hometown, thanks,” He replied numbly, missing the bite in his words as his teeth felt like they were _bending_ in the clench of his jaw. He was _smiling_. There was a beat of silence where everybody collectively held their breath for the predictable ‘your mom’ joke, but Richie didn’t have one.

He remembered blood spilling from pink lips, so abundant that it was black.

He remembered the pain and confusion in a single name, _Richie? _

He remembered held hands, remembered, _I fucked your mom. _

He didn’t have the energy to make a joke in a long time. He didn’t have the time or the distance from tragedy to find anything funny, “What are you fishing for? An autograph?”

Richie’s feet still hurt from walking and his hands were shaking. His eyes burnt like they were sandpapered from the inside out. He was – he was so fucking _tired_, and hungover, and he knew that he looked like shit. He knew that he _smelled_ like shit, and he really wasn’t in the fucking mood to deal with some drunk asshole that he knew in high school.

He wasn’t in the _mood_.

Bradley Donovan didn’t have a lisp anymore, but he had a loud boisterous laugh and a big meaty hand that he clasped over Richie’s shoulder. He learned in and breathed alcohol into his face, telling him, “Fuck you, man.”

Bradley Donovan was built like a fucking tank, was drunk at two o’clock in the afternoon, took his fucking autograph and argued with the jaded cashier about his invalid ID for fifteen minutes. Bradley Donovan needed to be _decked_, needed anger management classes because he threatened the kid when he was denied, because he grabbed the kid by the front of his shirt and broke a bottle of Heineken against the edge of the counter.

Bradley Donovan held the neck of a shattered bottle like a weapon.

He threw the bottles on the ground and shouted a litany of swear words.

And he stormed out.

Richie watched everything unfold through unseeing eyes, like he was watching a movie that he wasn’t interested in. He felt like it was very far away, a memory of a memory, and he was still in that cave, in those dead lights, in that house screaming _look at me. _

Screaming_, you did this. _

Screaming, _you did this, you know how delicate he is. _

Screaming, _don’t look at it, Eddie. Look at me. Look at me. Look at me. _

It felt like waking up for the first time in a long time when Bradley stomped over the broken glass and the beer-soaked floor, shoving passed him on his way out the door. Richie blinked and the cashier starred at him incredulously at his inaction.

Richie knew that he needed to say something, _look at me. _

He needed to be like, _wow, that guy sucked. _Or, _should we call the cops? _Or anything, but he didn’t say anything. He sat his whiskey on the wet counter and stood in the broken glass while the wet shag carpet curled around his shoes and soaked them in beer. He smiled and he said, “I would like to buy this now.”

He went through the motions.

He got cash out of his back pocket. He pushed his glasses up his face. He even put something in the tip jar that no one used.

And he sighed.

He listened to the kid and he sighed loudly, “Look at me.”

The kid’s name tag said that his name was _Jake_, and his green eyes were still wide and incredulous as he looked between the shattered glass on the counter and Richie, and then he looked weary. He looked fucking exhausted at Richie, look like he wanted to say, _‘did you fucking just see that,’ _and _‘I’m not doing this again, asshole,’ _and _‘are you going to be like this the entire time we’re home?’ _

He said, “It’s store policy.”

Richie fucking _heaved_, “Just fucking look at me.”

Richie understood everything that the kid was saying because he wasn’t a fucking moron, but he didn’t particularly give a fuck about it. He was _forty_, so he knew that he needed a fucking ID to buy alcohol. He had lived in Derry for eighteen goddamn years and has been back for two weeks, so he also fucking knew that he didn’t _need_ an ID to buy alcohol. Just cash.

He had cash.

“Look at me.”

The words sounded so fucking _labored_ as he dredged them up. They were tired and exhausted, weighting down with a self-hatred that Richie never knew he was capable of. They creaked from a grimaced smile, from a clenched fucking jaw. He was going to break his fucking _teeth_.

“Do you see this fucking face, this old as fucking dogshit face?” He asked, leaning over the counter that was still soaked in beer and littered with shattered glass. He stood in the sopping wet carpet, ground the green glass into the bottoms of his shoes as his shirt got wet the more he leaned forward. He belabored his point, “I got fucking _bifocals_ on, man. I got this stupid as fuck _depression_ beard going on because my friends _died_. I got wrinkles all over my goddamn face and my hairline is receding. I look like shit because I’m _forty_. _Kid.” _

The scent of beer was overwhelming this close to it. It was waking up his senses in the worst fucking way, twisting up his empty stomach. He eyes felt hot behind them. His heart pounded, ears burnt. He should be mindful of the glass, but he wasn’t.

Eddie would have told him to be mindful of the glass.

Eddie would have told _Jake _to stop being an asshole.

“Look, kid – ” _Don’t, Eddie. Look at me. _“ – I lost my wallet.”

His wallet _was_ lost because it was in his jacket and his jacket was with Eddie, and Eddie was – “I’m clearly not some fucking high school loser wandering in here with the hopes that you don’t give an enough of a shit to card minors. I got money. I got a fucking _mortgage_. I can’ pay for this shit and more, and I – I need it.”

“And I _need_ to see some ID,” The kid said. The shock coloring out of his voice and leaving only irritation. “No ID, no whiskey. Comprende, old man?”

Richie considered actually fucking smacking this kid.

“You’re fucking hilarious,” He said through his teeth, curling his hands into fists against the countertop. “Have you ever tried stand up? You ever watch some goddamn TV, asshole? Comedy Central? You got Netflix? I just did a special on Netflix. Trashmouth, Richie Tozier. Trashmouth Tozier, ring a bell? It did for that other guy.”

“I don’t really watch TV.”

“Okay.” He was wearing a fucking Rick and Morty t-shirt, but oh-fucking-kay. “It doesn’t fucking matter if you watch TV or watch paint dry because you can _google _me. Fucking – fucking Wikipedia my age and there you go.”

“It’s store policy, man.”

“I will pay you.”

“That’s how stores work, man,” Jake said because Jake wanted to be _punched_. “Look, it’s not even three yet and you’re literally begging to let me let you buy alcohol. Why don’t you do yourself a favor and go catch a bus to the DMV and then hit up AA. Don’t come back in here until you have some ID. It’s getting pathetic.”

_My friend died, _Richie thought about saying.

_The love of my whole fucking life died in front of me, _Richie thought about saying. _Sorry, I’m not coping with it well. I need a fucking drink. _

_Fuck you and fuck your judgment, _Richie thought about saying.

“I’m taking this,” He said.

He wrapped his hand around the neck of the bottle, grinding words into dust between his teeth. He dropped more cash than the whiskey cost and he stated, “Fucking call the cops, I don’t give a shit.”

_Look at me. _

No one ever accused him of being smart.

His parents used to say that he was _impulsive_, that he was a little _absentminded_ and a little _outspoken, _but what kid wasn’t at that age? They used to say that no parent wanted a kid that was a doormat to the world, that he would eventually need to find his own voice even if that voice did a ton if impressions at Aunt Mary’s funeral.

His sister had said a hundred times over that he was _embarrassing_ and _fucking annoying, _that he was a _dipshit that didn’t know when to shut his big fat trap _and that people weren’t allowed to bully her little bother about it. She used to say, _it’s practically a disability at this point. _

His teachers had called a _disruption. _They used to send notes home from school and make him press his nose against the chalkboard for talking too much. They used to make comments about his good grades and how much better of a student he would be if he would just learn to be quiet.

Sonia Kaspbrak had stared down her glasses at him in disgust on her front porch and said, _children should be seen and not heard. _She had twisted up her face and spat at him that he should be neither and to get off her doorstep before slamming the door in his face.

His friends used to call him _Trashmouth Tozier. _They used to call him _asshole, _and _fuckface, _and used to say things like _why don’t you shut the fuck up, Einstein, because I know what I’m doing. _They used to roll their eyes at his impressions and hide smiles at his admittedly shitty jokes. They used to shake their head and say, _beep, beep, Richie. _

_Look at me. Look at me. _

He had been _idiot _before. He had been called _crude, _and a _slacker, _and that specky face four-eyed loser from first period. He had been _thoughtless, _and _attention-seeking, _and far too fucking loud to ever go by unnoticed. He had been too bold not to be so stupid, throwing drinks off the balcony at the movie theater in solidary to Eddie’s fallen popcorn on top of Henry Bowers’ head.

He had laughed manically.

He had drawn the attention away from Eddie to himself and had grabbed his sleeve. He had pulled on Eddie’s arm until he was running too and had shouted over his shoulder, _fuck you, you mullet-wearing inbred. _He had grinned and his heart had pounded in his ears, and he still remembered the way that Eddie had gasped around his inhaler when they stopped in the thicket of the woods near the park.

He remembered the incredulous, _you have a fucking death wish or what, Rich? _

He could still taste his response fuzzy on the back of his teeth like popcorn butter and fizzy coke. He could still feel their weight on his tongue, in the pull of his mouth into a smile, “If they come after you than they come after me, Eds. Losers got to stick together.”

He could remember the way that Eddie’s mouth had twisted into a fucking frown and the way that his brows furrowed together. He remembered the flash of indignity, of hurt, disappointment that crossed his face. He remembered how much of a fucking hairpin trigger that Eddie has always fucking been and how his hands curled into fists, how he didn’t really shove him so much as _punch_ him in the shoulder.

He could still remember Eddie’s scoffed, “I don’t _need_ anybody protecting me, Richie.”

“I’m not protecting you,” He had said, and it had been a lie. Eddie had spat back with crossed arms that he wasn’t fucking weak, but it was never about being weak. It was about asthma, and pills, and Eddie being the smallest kid in their grade by a lot. It was about Bowers having a fucking _knife. _

It wasn’t about being weak because Eddie was never fucking weak, or delicate, or fragile like his mother thought. It was about vengeance, and retaliation, and a vindictive asshole with a _knife_. It was about not bleeding to death, and Richie couldn’t – “If I let you get _murdered _that it’s really going to put a damper on fucking your mom. I mean, I’m still going to do it but I’m not going to enjoy it as much.”

“If I ever get murdered, it _will_ be your fault,” Eddie had muttered then. He had kicked his shoe against the dirt and suggested that they head home before his mom started to worry. He had bumped their shoulders, smiled a little and declared, “I will fucking _haunt_ you just so you know.”

Richie didn’t hear sirens until he was at the edge of the woods, one foot in the thicket and the other out. He had watched the police car speed passed him, watched it turn away from King Spirits, and he didn’t worry about it. He walked, and walked, and walked.

The whiskey bottle clipped painfully against his front teeth when the third rung on the clubhouse’s ladder gave out from under his foot, dropping him unevenly onto his feet. Whiskey splashed against his upper lip and dripped down on his sweat-damp shirt, and Richie didn’t swear.

He didn’t say anything at all as he dropped his ass into the threadbare hammock and put his feet up. He listened to the whole damn place protest his existence and he remembered Eddie’s vow to haunt him. He held the bottle up in a toast and declared, “I wish you fucking would, buddy.”

Richie was too much of a lot of things to be considered truly smart.

He had gotten the grades for college, just didn’t have the drive or the want, or the need to go.

He never figured out when to shut up, but he knew how to cover up anxiety with a joke. He knew how to drown loneliness and longing in a pool of Your Mom jokes and cheap alcohol. He knew how to pile on the impressions and the jokes until no one was looking passed the masks to see that he was a fucking fraud. The whole thing was an _act. _

His whole life was a performance piece, hiding how he really felt.

He never did figure out how to deal with the chest-punched feeling he got when Eddie had told him _junior _year that he was going to apply for colleges in New York. He didn’t figure out how to make his mouth smile through the pain when he had suggested casually that he could go to New York after graduation too and Eddie had wondered, _why would you do that? What’s for you there? _

He never figured it out and he ran off to the other side of the country because of it.

Richie was crazy because Derry made people crazy, because small towns and feelings for a boy made you want to scratch your skin off. Derry made all of them neurotic in some way, made them forgetful, and fucking – _hot. _Why was he the only one that wasn’t…

Richie shook his head.

There was no normal after Derry.

There was no normal after that summer and Richie didn’t even feel normal when he was killing in it in the LA comedy circuit. He didn’t feel normal because there was something missing and – and forgetting about everything would be such a cop out now. Remembering was terrifying, and Richie was –

He was a fucking _coward_.

He steadied the trimmer in his hand and took a proper drink from the half empty bottle. He only pulled away when the whiskey started to burn his throat and his eyes started to water. He burped loudly and asked the empty clubhouse, “Do you remember when the drainage system at that slaughter house on the hill backed up and the streets literally ran red with blood? That was so fucked up.”

He tilted his head back into the hammock and stared at the spiderwebs on the ceiling, “This town is _fucked_, man. It’s fucked up.”

He pretended that he could hear their responses and tried to smile, “Yeah. Yeah, how was Bowers allowed to fucking _live_? Even before he took the fall for all that shit. He was an _asshole_.”

He sighed, “He had a knife, who the fuck would let him have a knife?”

And no one said anything because there was no one there.

There was just him because Stan was dead, and Eddie was buried. Bev, and Ben, and Bill, and Mike were all gone. They were living their lives. They were _living_.

He sighed.

“I know,” he said in a breath, taking another drink because he was still talking to no one. He was talking to the dead that could not tell him to stop drowning his guilt in alcohol, to stop sleeping in the clubhouse, stop scrolling through Eddie’s twitter and laughing at how fucking – fucking angry he was.

His fingers brushed against Ben’s old shower cap and he put it on his head, “To keep the spiders out of our hair, right?”

Richie had been so afraid that he would find Eddie bleeding out in some fucking alleyway somewhere because Bowers didn’t understand the concept of limits, or accidents, or people being breakable. He had been afraid that they’d break his inhaler when he needed it and no one would be there to help while Eddie suffocated to death, and it was – “It’s fucking _funny_.”

“It’s funny,” He tried to mean it even though there was no one to call him out for lying. He said it even though it wasn’t fucking funny at all. There was not enough time passed for anything to be funny. “It’s funny because – it’s funny because it happened. He bled out and I was there. He fucking – he fucking _died_ and I couldn’t save him even though I was there.”

He sighed and he rubbed his eyes. He asked the empty space, “Did you hear about this Adrian Mellon kid?”

Richie used to be ‘_move to LA and get famous’ _crazy. He used to be _‘never get over your first crush’ _crazy and ‘_now I got to kill this goddamn clown’ _crazy. He used to be _‘how did you not know that she wanted to suck your dick, Trashmouth’ _absentminded, _‘you’re famous now, you can have anybody’ _clueless.

He was _‘you blew it’ _stupid and _‘twenty-seven years too fucking late’ _dumb, and now he was sitting alone in a hole in the ground, drunk and sweating through his clothes, and he was _‘he’s gone, honey, he’s dead’ _fucking hurting.

Comedy was tragedy and time.

Richie had both and nothing was fucking funny.

He was consistently aware that there was something missing now.

That missing piece had always been there but getting that call from Mike had set off something inside of him and it had dissolved carefully crafted walls. He always knew that something was missing, but he had thought that it was missing in the selfish way that people were never truly satisfied with their success. He found lost memories in Derry, found his lost love, and fucking lost it again.

Within thirty-six hours, he fell in love with Eddie again and he watched him die.

Now there was a void inside of him and it was _eating_. It was biting away, hacking away at his insides until there would be nothing left to him. He was voided. He was pouring alcohol into _nothing_.

He had pushed away feelings that he was too afraid to try to understand and he let the denial grow so big that he thought it was the truth. He ignored it and buried it, and they all resurfaced like a killer fucking clown. He forgot about Derry, about Pennywise, about the reason that he had that cut on his hands, and it all came back.

He lost so much time because he forgot about shit that was important.

Richie blinked hard and he drank more, and he just wanted to – to not feel like this anymore. He wanted to talk to his friends. He wanted Stanley to roll his eyes at him and tell him that he was being dramatic. He wanted Eddie to freak out about how much he was drinking and tell him how many people choked on their own vomit when they went to bed drunk.

He wanted –

“I just wish that you were here,” He said to no one. He let his smile drop for the first time in days, let his jaw unhinge and from his lips a sob broke. He covered his mouth and held his breath, and his shoulders heaved, “I wish that I could have told you that I – that I –“

His voice cracked, “It’s not fucking fair.”

His voice _shattered_, “I just got you back.”

He said so much in his life and none of it ever meant a goddamn thing.

Richie curled a little tighter, cradled the whiskey bottle to his chest as the hammock groaned out a protest. It was only a matter of time before the thing gave out underneath his weight.

He should go _home. _He should go back on fucking tour.

He should pick up the stupid fucking Night Rider notebook that he found digging through the little chest tucked into the corner and write some new material about how his friend committed suicide, or how the love of his whole fucking life bled to death in his arms. He could really get a laugh just mentioning that Eddie’s last words was the one thing that _he’d_ been saying to him since fourth grade, or how about how Eddie died alone while they were fighting, or how they fucking left him there.

He could write a fucking _riot_ about how he looked Eddie in the face and convinced him to climb deeper into the sewer, or how his whole life had been about getting Eddie to fucking look at him and now he was dead. He died fucking looking at him.

He was dead and they didn’t even bury him.

He was dead, and _It_ buried him.

“Fuck,” Richie swore, pushing his glasses off his face to wipe his eyes. He pressed his fingers into the sockets until it hurt, until he could justify the tears, and the sniffling, and the sobs that he was holding back. “_Fuck.” _

Richie took a breath and it shattered halfway out of his mouth.

He took another and it was wet.

He took another and it had fucking _tears_. 

He pressed a hand to his mouth and closed his eyes, but there was no one here to see him. There was no one there to see because – because Eddie was fucking _dead_.

Richie startled when his phone buzzed.

He curled his fingers around it in his jacket pocket and planned to finally smash it to pieces. No, he planned to answer it and tell him manger to go fuck himself, but it wasn’t his manager on the line.

The caller ID said Bill.

Richie took a deep breath and he wiped at his eyes. He cleared his throat and answered the call, sounding casual, “Hey, Big Bill!”

“No, I’m not busy,” He said. “What’s up?”


End file.
